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The biggest ISP in Germany, Deutsche Telekom, has announced that the company is going to introduce traffic limits for ALL future contracts starting on May 2nd. Users, who transfer more data than the specific limit allows, will have their speed lowered to laughable 384 kbit/s. The technical measures to enforce the limits are planned to be introduced in 2016.

I'm sure more providers will follow, it's rumored that Vodafone has similar plans. While most European countries have much better offers concerning any kind of internet connection our Germany is even taking several steps backward.

I really hope that the Bundestag is going to intervene very soon but honestly, I'm not going to get my hopes up with the current coalition of conservatives and liberals.

TParis: The biggest ISP in Germany, Deutsche Telekom, has announced that the company is going to introduce traffic limits for ALL future contracts starting on May 2nd. Users, who transfer more data than the specific limit allows, will have their speed lowered to laughable 384 kbit/s. The technical measures to enforce the limits are planned to be introduced in 2016.

This isn't really abandoning net neutrality. It *might* be abandoning what you want net neutrality to be, sure. I do real networking for a living, backbone routers and core switching and stuff, plus I'm not from the EU where broadband is considered a utility, so maybe you can't agree with this, on principle, but I don't think anyone in the industry would call this (as reported in the article you linked) an attack on NN. Here's why:

1) NN basically asserts that you need to treat all traffic equally based on type, regardless of source. There's nothing about unlimited throughput in NN. And there's nothing in your link that suggests preferential treatment of *Internet data*.

2) The division of Internet from Intranet is something you *must* understand. If you have to leave your ISPs intranet for information, they have to pay for it. If it's locally proxied or cached, though, all they need is some RF space to push it to you, and copper and fiber carry a wide, wide spectrum of RF. So for their in-house TV service, they don't count that throughput against your monthly total because it's not traffic of the same*type* as other streaming video you might access.

3) There exists a vocal, ignorant minority (typically legal experts with no technical knowledge) who believe that NN must be FIFO without QoS. The Internet cannot work like that. It would be nice if it could. It can't.

Plus, do I read that right? Planning on allowing possibly up to 400gig a month before caps? You just can't need that much data month to month. How?

Eish, that's a harsh step backwards. It's nice to get a trickle of bandwidth instead of getting cut off outright, but once you've had uncapped it's difficult to go back. (It's still my first month with uncapped Internet - it's so great not having to worry about usage at all)

keeveek: I doubt all ISPs are going to follow on that. If only one big player is left with unlimited bandwidth, it would collect all the customers.

Unfortunately the problem here is that most of the infrastructure belongs to Telekom and our regulatory agency allowed Telekom to get higher prices from other providers for lending his lines, mostly with the goal in mind telekom will use that money to invest in a better infrastructure. Above 90% of the internet here is still dsl and so mostly kind of the control of Telekom.

I'm not a fan of Sascha Lobo, but I have to agree with his latest article about that topic: It's a question of our politics to take care of the net neutrality and take more control of the broadband expansion - if you leave that to the market you can be sure every firm will try to avoid net neutrality for it's own good, especially if one firm still has some monopoly power.

I see a big comeback of the pirate party here. Also the green party will get another updraft, especially since there are similar problems in the electricity market since there are no results in the necessary infrastructure expansion for the quit from the nuclear power while prices are heavily raising.

TParis: The biggest ISP in Germany, Deutsche Telekom, has announced that the company is going to introduce traffic limits for ALL future contracts starting on May 2nd. Users, who transfer more data than the specific limit allows, will have their speed lowered to laughable 384 kbit/s. The technical measures to enforce the limits are planned to be introduced in 2016.

OneFiercePuppy: This isn't really abandoning net neutrality. It *might* be abandoning what you want net neutrality to be, sure. I do real networking for a living, backbone routers and core switching and stuff, plus I'm not from the EU where broadband is considered a utility, so maybe you can't agree with this, on principle, but I don't think anyone in the industry would call this (as reported in the article you linked) an attack on NN. Here's why:

1) NN basically asserts that you need to treat all traffic equally based on type, regardless of source. There's nothing about unlimited throughput in NN. And there's nothing in your link that suggests preferential treatment of *Internet data*.

2) The division of Internet from Intranet is something you *must* understand. If you have to leave your ISPs intranet for information, they have to pay for it. If it's locally proxied or cached, though, all they need is some RF space to push it to you, and copper and fiber carry a wide, wide spectrum of RF. So for their in-house TV service, they don't count that throughput against your monthly total because it's not traffic of the same*type* as other streaming video you might access.

3) There exists a vocal, ignorant minority (typically legal experts with no technical knowledge) who believe that NN must be FIFO without QoS. The Internet cannot work like that. It would be nice if it could. It can't.

Plus, do I read that right? Planning on allowing possibly up to 400gig a month before caps? You just can't need that much data month to month. How?

Of course it's against net neutrality, limiting the traffic to other services at a minimum and offering it's own similar services without a traffic limit. Beside telephone and internet Telekom offers other services like TV, movie renting and has a special deal with spotify.

OneFiercePuppy: This isn't really abandoning net neutrality. It *might* be abandoning what you want net neutrality to be, sure. I do real networking for a living, backbone routers and core switching and stuff, plus I'm not from the EU where broadband is considered a utility, so maybe you can't agree with this, on principle, but I don't think anyone in the industry would call this (as reported in the article you linked) an attack on NN. Here's why:

1) NN basically asserts that you need to treat all traffic equally based on type, regardless of source. There's nothing about unlimited throughput in NN. And there's nothing in your link that suggests preferential treatment of *Internet data*.

Yes it is. The Deutsche Telekom has their own Streaming offer with Television over the Internet, which is called "Entertain". "Entertain" traffic is excluded from the traffic limitation. Who would use the competitors like Lovefilm, which are literally blocked with a reduced speed of 384 k/bit after 75 GB traffic? The Telecom has their own cloud service, their own download shops for software, music and movies - what if the exclude this from their traffic limitations too?

mefet: Well, we all know that they're thinking about torrent... 384 kb....there are places ni my country where that is the only internet avaliable... Wich is exactly the limit thay are going to stablish?

This is the exact speed limit... And there are many parts in Germany where this is also the only available internet speed...

DukeNukemForever: Of course it's against net neutrality, lowering the traffic to other services at a minimum and offering it's own similar services for free.

Nope. You're wrong, but you're in good company. You're disregarding the inter vs intra network differences. It's an important distinction.

Please don't think that because I'm from the USA I must be ignorant of German interpretations of law. I assume Gunter Kneips university paper (now a little long in the tooth but easy to read) is still fairly accurate regarding German law on the matter? I skimmed pages 4 and 5 to refresh my memory. You might do so as well.

Rincewind81: Yes it is. The Deutsche Telekom has their own Streaming offer with Television over the Internet, which is called "Entertain". "Entertain" traffic is excluded from the traffic limitation. Who would use the competitors like Lovefilm, which are literally blocked with a reduced speed of 384 k/bit after 75 GB traffic? The Telecom has their own cloud service, their own download shops for software, music and movies - what if the exclude this from their traffic limitations too?

No. See my previous post. Data caps do not relate to net neutrality, no matter how much you might wish they did.

Getting the NN law changed would stop a lot of the Internet arguments, because few non-specialists understand the distinctions involved.

It was just a matter of time before this happened. Most countries have had unmetered internet in the past, but were fairly quick to abandon this in favour of limited traffic. The German ISP market has been a bit of a holdout in the past.

The load on ISPs over the past 4-5 years has risen astronomically thanks to video streaming services and, to a lesser extent, the digital distribution of software, and it really was an unsustainable state of affairs. Many parts of Germany - especially rural regions - have had severe bandwidth bottlenecks caused by heavy usage.

I know people are very keen on claiming that digital distribution is cheap and costs next to nothing, and there is some bizarre story going around about bandwidth being 'cheap', but someone somewhere always pays the price and in this case it's the ISPs and data centres in hardware and development costs.

Now, I have no love for T-Kom - they are absurdly expensive and their customer support sucks beyond belief, not to mention that they have abused their monopoly on countless occasions - but you do need to remember that T-Kom's infrastructure carries not only its own traffic but that of the providers that lease its copper lines.

Please don't think that because I'm from the USA I must be ignorant of German interpretations of law. I assume Gunter Kneips university paper (now a little long in the tooth but easy to read) is still fairly accurate regarding German law on the matter? I skimmed pages 4 and 5 to refresh my memory. You might do so as well.

I know Günter Knieps work, but I have to disagree here. Offering your own services without a limitation but heavily limiting others is privileging your own data. Technically you can maybe distinguish between internet and intranet, of course, but for the customers it's relevant what services and data they can access through their last mile, and here telekoms own network services, labeled as intranet, are still another internet services.